Goethe's Conception of the World
GA 6
The Position of Goethe in the Evolution of Western Thought
IV. Goethe and the Platonic View of the World
[ 1 ] I have described the evolution of thought from the age of Plato to that of Kant in order to be able to show the impressions which Goethe was bound to receive when he turned to the outcome of the philosophical thoughts to which he might have adhered in order to satisfy his intense desire for knowledge. He found in the philosophies no answer to the innumerable problems which his nature impelled him to face. Indeed, whenever he delved into the world-conception of some particular philosopher, he found an opposition between the drift of his questions and the world of thought from which he would have liked to get counsel. The reason for this lies in the fact that the one-sided Platonic separation of idea and experience was repugnant to his being. When he observed Nature the ideas lay there before him. He could therefore only think of Nature as permeated by ideas. A world of ideas that neither permeates the objects of Nature nor brings about their appearance and disappearance, their becoming and growth, is to him nothing but a feeble web of thought. The logical fabrication of trains of thoughts without penetration into the life and creative activity of Nature appeared to him unfruitful, for he felt himself intimately one with Nature. He looked upon himself as a living member of Nature. In his view, all that arose in his spirit had been permitted by Nature so to arise. Man should not sit away in a corner and imagine that from there he can spin out of himself a web of thoughts which elucidates the true being of things. He should rather allow the stream of world-events to flow through him perpetually. Then he will feel that the world of ideas is nothing else than the active, creative power of Nature. He will not then want to stand above the objects in order to reflect upon them, but he will sink himself into their depths and extract from them all that lives and works in them.
[ 2 ] Goethe's artistic nature led him to this mode of thinking. He felt his poetic creations grow out of his personality with the same necessity as that which makes a flower blossom. The way in which the spirit within him produced the work of Art seemed to him no different from the way in which Nature produces her creatures. And just as in the work of Art the spiritual element cannot be separated from the spiritless material, so it was impossible for him, in face of a natural object, to think the perception without the idea. A point of view to which the perception is only an indefinite, confused element and which wishes to see the world of ideas separated off, purged of all experience, is therefore foreign to him. In all those world-conceptions in which the elements of a partially understood Platonism lived, he sensed something contrary to Nature. For this reason he could not find in the philosophers what he sought. He was seeking for the ideas which live in the objects and which allow all the particulars of experience to appear as if growing out of a living whole, and the philosophers offered him husks of thought that they had combined into systems according to the principles of Logic. He always found that he was thrown back on himself when he turned to others for explanation of the problems which Nature set him.
[ 3 ] One of the things from which Goethe suffered before his Italian journey was that his yearning for knowledge could find no satisfaction. In Italy he was able to form a view of the motive forces which give rise to works of Art. He recognised that perfect works of Art contain what men reverence as the Divine, the Eternal. After beholding the artistic creations which interested him most deeply, he wrote these words: “The great works of Art, like the highest creations of Nature, have been brought forth in conformity with true and natural law. All that is arbitrary, that is invented, collapses: there is Necessity, there is God.” The art of the Greeks drew forth this utterance from him: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to those laws by which Nature herself proceeds, and of which I am on the track.” What Plato believed to have found in the world of ideas and what the philosophers could never bring home to Goethe, streamed forth to him from the works of Art in Italy. What he is able to regard as the basis of knowledge is revealed to him for the first time, in a perfect form, in Art. He sees in artistic production a mode and higher stage of Nature's working; artistic creation is to him an enhanced Nature-creation. He expressed this later in his characterisation of Winckelmann: “In that man is placed on Nature's pinnacle, he regards himself as another whole Nature, whose task is to bring forth inwardly yet another pinnacle. For this purpose he heightens his powers, imbues himself with all perfections and virtues, summons discrimination, order and harmony, and rises finally to the production of a work of Art.” Goethe does not attain to his world-conception along the path of logical deduction but as a result of the contemplation of the essence of Art. And what he found in Art he seeks also in Nature.
[ 4 ] The kind of activity by means of which Goethe acquired his knowledge of Nature does not differ essentially from artistic activity. Both play into and mutually react on each other. In Goethe's view the artist must surely become mightier and more effective when, in addition to his talent, “he is a well-informed Botanist, when he knows, from the root upwards, the influence of the different parts on the health and growth of the plant, their significance and mutual interaction, when he penetrates into and reflects upon the successive development of the flowers, leaves, fertilisation, fruit and new seed. He will not then reveal his own ‘taste’ by a choice from among the phenomena, but by a true portrayal of the qualities he will instruct and at the same time fill us with admiration.” The work of Art is therefore the more perfect, the more fully it expresses the same law as that embodied in the work of Nature to which it corresponds. There is but one uniform realm of truth, and this includes both Art and Nature. Hence the faculty of artistic creation cannot differ essentially from the faculty of the cognition of Nature. Goethe says in reference to the artist's style that “it is based on the deepest foundations of knowledge, on the essence of things in so far as it is granted us to cognise this essence in visible, tangible forms.” The view of the world that had proceeded from one-sided understanding of Platonic conceptions draws a sharp boundary line between Science and Art. It bases artistic activity upon phantasy, upon feeling, and would represent scientific results as the outcome of a development of concepts that is free of the element of phantasy. Goethe sees the matter differently. When he directs his gaze to Nature he finds there a sum-total of ideas; but to him the ideal constituent is not confined within the single object of experience; the idea points out beyond the particular object to related objects wherein it manifests in a similar way. The philosophical observer takes hold of this ideal element and brings it to direct expression in his thought-creations. This ideal element works also upon the artist. But it stimulates him to give form to a creation wherein the idea does not merely function as in a work of Nature, but becomes present in appearance. That which in a work of Nature is merely ideal, and is revealed to the spiritual vision of the observer, becomes concrete, perceptible reality in the work of Art. The artist realises the ideas of Nature. It is not, however, necessary that he should be conscious of these in the form of ideas. When he contemplates an object or an event something else assumes direct form in his spirit—something that contains as actual appearance what Nature contains only as idea. The artist gives us images of Nature's works and in these images the ideal content of Nature's works is transformed into perceptual content. The philosopher shows how Nature presents herself to contemplative thought; the artist shows how Nature would appear if she were to reveal openly her active forces not merely to thought but also to perception. It is one and the same truth that the philosopher presents in the form of thought and the artist in the form of an image. The two differ only in their means of expression.
[ 5 ] The insight into the true relationship of idea and experience which Goethe acquired in Italy is only the fruit of the seed that was lying concealed in his nature. The Italian journey afforded the sun-warmth which was able to ripen the seed. In the Essay “Nature” which appeared in 1782 in the Tiefurt Journal, and for which Goethe was responsible, [Compare my proof of Goethe's authorship in Vol. VII of the publications of the Goethe Society.] the germs of the later Goethean world-conception are already to be found. What is here dim feeling later develops into clear, definite thought. “Nature! we are surrounded and embraced by her, we cannot draw back from her, nor can we penetrate more deeply into her being. She lifts us, unasked and unwarned, into the gyrations of her dance and whirls us away until we fall exhausted from her arms. ... She (Nature) has thought and she broods unceasingly, not as a man but as Nature. ... She has neither language nor speech, but she creates tongues and hearts through which she speaks and feels. ... It was not I who spoke of her. Nay, it was she who spoke it all, true and false. Hers is the blame for all things, hers the credit.” At the time when Goethe wrote these sentences it was not yet clear to him how Nature expresses her ideal being through man; but what he did feel was that it is the voice of the Spirit of Nature that sounds in the Spirit of Man.
[ 6 ] In Italy Goethe found the spiritual atmosphere which was able to develop his organs of cognition in the only way that in accordance with their inherent nature they could develop, if he were ever to find complete satisfaction. In Rome he had “many discussions with Moriz about Art and its theoretical demands;” as he observed the metamorphosis of plants on the journey there developed in him a natural method that later proved fruitful for the cognition of the whole of organic Nature. “For as vegetation unfolded her procedure before me stage by stage, I could not fall into error, but allowing things as I did to take their own course, I could not fail to recognise the ways and means by which the most undeveloped state was brought to perfection.” A few years after his return from Italy Goethe was able to find a mode of procedure, born of his spiritual needs, for the observation of inorganic Nature also. “In connection with physical investigations the conviction was borne in upon me that in all observation of objects the highest duty is to search for every condition under which the phenomenon appears, with the greatest exactitude, and to strive for the greatest possible perfection of the phenomena; because ultimately they are bound to range themselves alongside each other or rather overlap each other, to form a kind of organisation before the gaze of the investigator, and to manifest their inner, common life.”
[ 7 ] Nowhere did Goethe find enlightenment. He had always to enlighten himself. He tried to find the reason for this and came to the conclusion that he had no facility for philosophy in the proper sense. The reason, however, lies in the fact that the one-sided comprehension of the Platonic mode of thought which dominated all philosophies accessible to Goethe was contrary to the healthy tendency of his nature. In his youth he had repeatedly turned to Spinoza. He admits that this philosopher always had a “pacifying effect” upon him. The reason for this is that Spinoza conceives of the universe as one great unity with the single parts proceeding necessarily from the whole. But when Goethe entered into the content of Spinoza's Philosophy he still felt it to be alien to him. “It must not be imagined that I was able to agree absolutely with his writings and admit their truth word for word; for I had already realised only too clearly that no one person understands another, nor thinks as another, even although their words may be the same; I had realised that a conversation or reading would awaken different trains of thought in different people. And one will credit the author of Werther and Faust with the fact that, deeply permeated by such misunderstandings, he is not conceited enough to imagine that he has perfect understanding of a man, who, as a disciple of Descartes has raised himself through mathematical and rabbinical culture to the summit of thought which up to the present time seems to be the goal of all speculative endeavours.” It was not the fact that Spinoza had been taught by Descartes, nor that Spinoza had attained to the summit of thought as the result of mathematical and rabbinical culture that made him an element to which Goethe could not wholly surrender himself, but it was Spinoza's purely logical method of handling knowledge—a method that is alien to reality. Goethe could not surrender himself to a mode of pure thinking free of all element of experience, because he could not separate this from the sum-total of the real. He did not want to connect one thought with another in a merely logical sense. Such an activity of thought seemed to him rather to depart from true reality. He felt that he must sink his spirit into the experience in order to reach the idea. The mutual interplay of idea and perception was to Goethe a spiritual breathing. “Time is regulated by the swings of the pendulum; the moral scientific world is regulated by the interplay of idea and experience.” To observe the world and its phenomena in the sense of these words seemed to Goethe to be in conformity with Nature. For he had no doubt but that Nature observes the same procedure; that she (Nature) is a development from a mysterious, living Whole into the diverse and specific phenomena that fill space and time. The mysterious Whole is the world of the idea. “The idea is eternal and unique; that we also use the plural is unfortunate. All things that we perceive and of which we can speak are but manifestations of the idea; we utter concepts and to this extent the idea is itself a concept.” Nature's creative activity proceeds from the ideal Whole into the particular that is given to perception as something real. The observer ought therefore “to recognise the ideal in the real and allay his temporary dissatisfaction with the finite by rising to the infinite.” Goethe is convinced that “Nature proceeds according to idea just in the same way as man follows an idea in all that he undertakes.” When man really succeeds in rising to the idea and in comprehending from out of the idea the details of perception, he accomplishes the same thing as Nature accomplishes by allowing her creations to issue forth from the mysterious Whole. So long as man has no sense of the working and creative activity of the idea, his thinking is divorced from living Nature. He must regard thinking as a purely subjective activity that is able to project an abstract picture of Nature. But directly he senses the way in which the idea lives and is active in his inner being he regards himself and Nature as one Whole, and what makes its appearance in his inner being as a subjective element is for him at the same time objective; he knows that he no longer confronts Nature as a stranger, but he feels that he has grown together with the whole of her. The subjective has become objective; the objective is wholly permeated with the spirit. Goethe thinks that Kant's fundamental error consists in the fact that he (Kant) “regards the subjective, cognitive faculty itself as object, and makes indeed a sharp but not wholly correct division at the point where subjective and objective meet “ (Weimar Edition, Part II. Volume II. Page 376.). The cognitive faculty appears to man as subjective only so long as he does not notice that it is Nature herself who speaks through this faculty. Subjective and objective meet when the objective world of ideas lives in the subject and when all that is active in Nature herself lives in the spirit of man. When this happens, all antithesis between subject and object ceases. This antithesis has meaning only so long as it is artificially sustained and man regards the ideas as being his own thoughts by which the being of Nature is reflected, but in which, however, this being is not itself active. Kant and his followers had no inkling of the fact that the essential being of objects is directly experienced in the ideas of reason. To them the ideal is merely subjective, and they therefore came to the conclusion that the ideal can necessarily only be valid if that to which it is related, the world of experience, is also merely subjective. The Kantian mode of thought is in sharp contrast to Goethe's views. There are, it is true, isolated utterances of Goethe where he speaks with some appreciation of Kant's views. He says that he has been present at many discussions of these views. “With a little attention I was able to observe the reappearance of the old cardinal question—the question as to how much the Self and how much the external world contributes to our spiritual existence. I had never separated these two, and when I philosophized in my own fashion about objects, I did so with unconscious naiveté and really believed that I saw my opinions clearly before me. As soon, however, as that dispute came into the discussion, I wanted to range myself on that side which does man most credit, and I gave entire approbation to all those friends who maintained with Kant that even if all knowledge commences with experience it is not necessarily all derived from experience.” Neither does the idea, in Goethe's view, originate from that portion of experience which may be perceived through the senses of man. Reason, Imagination (Phantasie) must be active and penetrate to the inner being of things in order to master the ideal element of existence. To this extent the spirit of man participates in the birth of knowledge. Goethe thinks that honour is due to man because the higher reality which is inaccessible to the senses, is made manifest in his spirit; Kant, on the other hand, denies the character of higher reality of the world of experience, because it contains elements that are derived from the spirit. Goethe was only able to find himself in some measure of agreement with the Kantian principles when he had interpreted them in the light of his own world-conception. The fundamental principles of the Kantian mode of thought are strongly antagonistic to Goethe's nature. If he does not emphasise this sharply enough, it is really only because he will not allow himself to enter into these fundamental principles because they are too alien to him. “It was the Introduction (to The Critique of Pure Reason) that pleased me; I could not venture into the labyrinth itself for here I was restrained by my poetic gift and there by the human intellect, and I felt no benefit anywhere.” In reference to his discussions with the followers of Kant, Goethe had to make this confession: “They listened to me, it is true, but could give me no reply nor be helpful in any way. More than once it happened that one or another of them admitted in smiling admiration, ‘it is certainly analogous to the Kantian mode of conception, but in a very peculiar sense.’” ... It was, as I have shown, not analogous at all, but the very reverse of Kant's mode of conception.
[ 8 ] It is interesting to see how Schiller tries to explain to himself the difference between the Goethean mode of thinking and his own. He senses the originality and freedom of Goethe's world-conception. He cannot, however, rid his mind of thought elements that are the result of a one-sided conception of Platonism. He cannot attain the insight that idea and perception are not separated from each other in reality, but are only thought of as separated by the intellect that has been led astray by a misguided trend of ideas. Therefore in contrast to the Goethean mode of thinking which he describes as intuitive, he places his own speculative mode of thinking and asserts that both must lead to one and the same goal if they only operate with sufficient power. Schiller assumes that the intuitive mind adheres to the empirical, the individual, and rises from there to the law, to the idea. If such a mind is endowed with the quality of genius it will cognise in the empirical, the necessary; in the individual, the species. The speculative mind, on the other hand, must proceed by the reverse path. The law, the idea, has first to be given to it and from thence it descends to the empirical and individual. If such a mind is endowed with the quality of genius it will of course always have the species only in view, but with the possibility of life and with an established relation to real objects. The assumption of a special type of mind—of the speculative in contradistinction to the intuitive—is based on the belief that the world of ideas has an existence separate and distinct from the world of perception. If this were the case a path could be found along which the content of the ideas about the objects of perception might enter the mind even when the mind does not seek it in experience. If, however, the world of ideas is inseparably bound up with the reality given in experience, if the two only exist as one Whole, there can only be an intuitive cognition that seeks for the idea in the experience and apprehends the species along with the individual. The truth is that there is no purely speculative mind in Schiller's sense. For the species exist only within the sphere to which the individuals also pertain. The mind cannot find them elsewhere. If a so-called speculative mind really has conceptions of species, these are derived from observation of the real world. When the living feeling for this origin, for the essential connection of the species with the individual, is lost, there arises the opinion that such ideas can arise in the reason also without experience. Those who hold this opinion describe a number of abstract conceptions of species as the content of the pure reason because they do not see the threads which bind these ideas to experience. Such an illusion can occur most easily in connection with ideas that are the most general and comprehensive in character. Because such ideas cover a wide region of reality, a great deal that appertains to the entities belonging to this region is effaced or obliterated. A man may absorb a number of such general ideas through tradition and then come to believe that they are inborn in human beings or that they have been spun by man from out of pure reason. A mind that lapses into such a belief may regard itself as speculative in character. It will, however, never be able to extract from its world of ideas any ideas other than have been placed there by tradition. Schiller is in error when he says that the speculative mind, if it is endowed with the quality of genius, produces “indeed only species but with the possibility of life and with an established relation to real objects” (Compare Schiller's letter to Goethe, 23rd August, 1794.). A truly speculative mind, living only in concepts of species, could find in its world of ideas no established relationship to reality other than that already existing within that world of ideas. A mind that has relation to the reality of Nature and in spite of this designates itself as speculative, is labouring under a delusion as to its own nature. This delusion can mislead it into negligence of its relation to reality and to actual life. It will imagine itself able to dispense with direct perception because it believes that other sources of truth are in its possession. The result of this always is that the ideal world of such a mind bears a dull, pale character. The fresh colours of life will be lacking from its thoughts. Those who wish to live with reality will be able to acquire little from such a world of thought. It cannot be admitted that the speculative type of mind is on the same level as the intuitive; it is stunted and impoverished. The intuitive mind is not concerned with individuals alone, it does not seek the character of necessity in the empirical. But when it applies itself to Nature, perception and idea coalesce into unity. Both are seen to exist within each other and are perceived as one Whole. The intuitive mind may rise to the most universal truths, to the highest abstractions, but direct, actual life will always be evident in its world of thought. Goethe's thinking was of this nature. In his Anthropology, Heinroth has spoken about this kind of thinking in striking words that pleased Goethe in the highest degree, because they explained to him his own nature. “Dr. Heinroth speaks favourably of my nature and activity, indeed he describes my modus operandi as original; he says that my thinking faculty is objectively active, by which he means to express that my thinking does not sever itself from the objects; that the elements inherent in the objects and the perceptions enter into my thinking and are permeated by it in a most intimate way; that my perceiving is itself thinking, my thinking, perceiving.” Fundamentally speaking, Heinroth is describing nothing else than the way in which all sound thinking is related to objects. Any other mode of procedure is a deviation from the natural path. If perception predominates in a man he adheres to the individual element; he cannot penetrate to the deeper foundations of reality. If abstract thought predominates in him, his concepts are manifestly inadequate to comprehend the whole living content of the real. The extreme of the first deviation from the natural path produces the crude empiricist who contents himself with the individual facts; the extreme of the other deviation is represented in the philosopher who worships pure Reason and who merely thinks, without realising that thoughts in their essential being, are bound up with perception. In beautiful imagery Goethe describes the feeling of the thinker who rises to the highest truths without losing the sense for living experience. At the beginning of the year 1784 he writes an Essay on Granite. He goes to a hill composed of this stone where he is able to soliloquise as follows: “Here you are resting on a substructure that extends to the very depths of the Earth; no newer stratum, no deposited, heaped-up fragments are laid between you and the firm foundation of the primordial world; you are not passing over a continuous grave as in yonder fruitful valleys; these peaks have brought forth no living thing, have devoured no living thing; they are antecedent to all life, they transcend all life. In this moment when the inner attractive and moving forces of the Earth are working directly upon me, when the influence of the heavens hovers more closely around me, it is given to me to attain to a more sublime perception of Nature, and as the human spirit gives life to everything, an image whose sublimity I cannot withstand, is stirred to activity within me. looking down this naked peak with scanty moss hardly perceptible at its base, I say to myself that this loneliness overtakes one who would fain open his soul only to the first, oldest, deepest feelings of truth. Such an one can say to himself: here on the most ancient, imperishable altar, built immediately above the depths of Creation, I bring a sacrifice to the Being of all Beings. I feel the first firm beginnings of our existence; I look over the world with its valleys now rugged, now undulating, its wide fertile meadows, and my soul, raised above itself and all else, yearns for the Heavens that draw nigh. But soon the burning sun calls back thirst and hunger—human needs—and one looks around for those valleys above which one's spirit had raised itself.” Such enthusiasm in knowledge, such a sense for the oldest, immutable truths can only develop in a man who continually finds his way back from the spheres of the world of ideas to direct perceptions.
Goethe und die platonische Weltsicht
[ 1 ] Ich habe die Gedankenentwickelung von Platos bis zu Kants Zeit geschildert, um zeigen zu können, welche Eindrücke Goethe empfangen mußte, wenn er sich an den Niederschlag der philosophischen Gedanken wandte, an die er sich halten konnte, um sein so starkes Erkenntnisbedürfnis zu befriedigen. Auf die unzähligen Fragen, zu denen ihn seine Natur drängte, fand er in den Philosophien keine Antworten. Ja, es zeigte sich, so oft er sich in die Weltanschauung eines Philosophen vertiefte, ein Gegensatz zwischen der Richtung, die seine Fragen einschlugen und der Gedankenwelt, bei der er sich Rat holen wollte. Der Grund liegt darin, daß die einseitig platonische Trennung von Idee und Erfahrung seiner Natur zuwider war. Wenn er die Natur beobachtete, so brachte sie ihm die Ideen entgegen. Er konnte sie deshalb nur ideenerfüllt denken. Eine Ideenwelt, welche die Dinge der Natur nicht durchdringt, ihr Entstehen und Vergehen, ihr Werden und Wachsen nicht hervorbringt, ist ihm ein kraftloses Gedankengespinst. Das logische Fortspinnen von Gedankenreihen, ohne Versenkung in das wirkliche Leben und Schaffen der Natur erscheint ihm unfruchtbar. Denn er fühlt sich mit der Natur innig verwachsen. Er betrachtet sich als ein lebendiges Glied der Natur. Was in seinem Geiste entsteht, das hat, nach seiner Ansicht, die Natur in ihm entstehen lassen. Der Mensch soll sich nicht in eine Ecke stellen und glauben, daß er da aus sich heraus ein Gedankengewebe spinnen könne, das über das Wesen der Dinge aufklärt. Er soll den Strom des Weltgeschehens beständig durch sich durchfließen lassen. Dann wird er fühlen, daß die Ideenwelt nichts anderes ist, als die schaffende und tätige Gewalt der Natur. Er wird nicht über den Dingen stehen wollen, um über sie nachzudenken, sondern er wird sich in ihre Tiefen eingraben und aus ihnen herausholen, was in ihnen lebt und wirkt.
[ 2 ] Zu solcher Denkweise führte Goethe seine Künstlernatur. Mit derselben Notwendigkeit, mit der eine Blume blüht, fühlte er seine dichterischen Erzeugnisse aus seiner Persönlichkeit herauswachsen. Die Art, wie der Geist in ihm das Kunstwerk hervorbrachte, schien ihm nicht verschieden von der zu sein, wie die Natur ihre Geschöpfe erzeugt. Und wie im Kunstwerke das geistige Element von der geistlosen Materie nicht zu trennen ist, so war es ihm auch unmöglich, bei einem Dinge der Natur die Wahrnehmung ohne die Idee vorzustellen. Fremd blickte ihn daher eine Anschauung an, die in der Wahrnehmung nur etwas Unklares, Verworrenes sah und die Ideenwelt abgesondert, gereinigt von aller Erfahrung betrachten wollte. Er fühlte in jeder Weltanschauung, in der die Elemente des einseitig verstandenen Platonismus lebten, etwas Naturwidriges. Deshalb konnte er bei den Philosophen nicht finden, was er bei ihnen suchte. Er suchte die Ideen, die in den Dingen leben, und die alle Einzelheiten der Erfahrung als hervorwachsend aus einem lebendigen Ganzen erscheinen lassen, und die Philosophen lieferten ihm Gedankenhülsen, die sie nach logischen Grundsätzen zu Systemen verbunden hatten. Immer wieder fand er sich auf sich selbst zurückgewiesen, wenn er bei andern Aufklärung suchte über die Rätsel, die ihm die Natur aufgab.
[ 3 ] Es gehört zu den Dingen, an denen Goethe vor seiner italienischen Reise gelitten hat, daß sein Erkenntnisbedürfnis keine Befriedigung finden konnte. In Italien konnte er sich eine Ansicht bilden über die Triebkräfte, aus denen die Kunstwerke hervorgehen. Er erkannte, daß in den vollendeten Kunstwerken das enthalten ist, was die Menschen als Göttliches, als Ewiges verehren. Nach dem Anblicke von künstlerischen Schöpfungen, die ihn besonders interessieren, schreibt er die Worte nieder: «Die hohen Kunstwerke sind zugleich als die höchsten Naturwerke von Menschen nach wahren und natürlichen Gesetzen hervorgebracht worden. Alles Willkürliche, Eingebildete fällt zusammen; da ist Notwendigkeit, da ist Gott.» Die Kunst der Griechen entlockt ihm den Ausspruch: «Ich habe die Vermutung, daß sie (die Griechen) nach eben den Gesetzen verfuhren, nach welchen die Natur selbst verfährt und denen ich auf der Spur bin.» Was Plato in der Ideenwelt zu finden glaubte, was die Philosophen Goethe nie nahe bringen konnten, das blickt ihm aus den Kunstwerken Italiens entgegen. In der Kunst offenbart sich für Goethe zuerst das in vollkommener Gestalt, was er als die Grundlage der Erkenntnis ansehen kann. Er erblickt in der künstlerischen Produktion eine Art und höhere Stufe des Naturwirkens; künstlerisches Schaffen ist ihm gesteigertes Naturschaffen. Er hat das in seiner Charakteristik Winckelmanns später ausgesprochen: «... indem der Mensch auf den Gipfel der Natur gestellt ist, so sieht er sich wieder als eine ganze Natur an, die in sich abermals einen Gipfel hervorzubringen hat. Dazu steigert er sich, indem er sich mit allen Vollkommenheiten und Tugenden durchdringt, Wahl, Ordnung, Harmonie und Bedeutung aufruft und sich endlich zur Produktion des Kunstwerkes erhebt...». Nicht auf dem Wege logischer Schlußfolgerung, sondern durch Betrachtung des Wesens der Kunst gelangt Goethe zu seiner Weltanschauung. Und was er in der Kunst gefunden hat, das sucht er auch in der Natur.
[ 4 ] Die Tätigkeit, durch die sich Goethe in den Besitz einer Naturerkenntnis setzt, ist nicht wesentlich von der künstlerischen verschieden. Beide gehen ineinander über und greifen übereinander. Der Künstler muß, nach Goethes Ansicht, größer und entschiedener werden, wenn er zu seinem «Talente noch ein unterrichteter Botaniker ist, wenn er, von der Wurzel an, den Einließ der verschiedenen Teile auf das Gedeihen und das Wachstum der Pflanze, ihre Bestimmung und wechselseitige Wirkung erkennt, wenn er die sukzessive Entwicklung der Blumen, Blätter, Befruchtung, Frucht und des neuen Keimes einsieht und überdenkt. Er wird alsdann nicht bloß durch die Wahl aus den Erscheinungen seinen Geschmack zeigen, sondern er wird uns auch durch eine richtige Darstellung der Eigenschaften zugleich in Verwunderung setzen und belehren.» Das Kunstwerk ist demnach um so vollkommener, je mehr in ihm dieselbe Gesetzmäßigkeit zum Ausdruck kommt, die in dem Naturwerke enthalten ist, dem es entspricht. Es gibt nur ein einheitliches Reich der Wahrheit, und dieses umfaßt Kunst und Natur. Daher kann auch die Fähigkeit des künstlerischen Schaffens von der des Naturerkennens nicht wesentlich verschieden sein. Vom Stil des Künstlers sagt Goethe, daß er «auf den tiefsten Grundfesten der Erkenntnis ruhe, auf dem Wesen der Dinge, insofern uns erlaubt ist, es in sichtbaren und greifbaren Gestalten zu erkennen.» Die aus einseitig erfaßten platonischen Vorstellungen hervorgegangene Weltbetrachtung zieht eine scharfe Grenzlinie zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst. Die künstlerische Tätigkeit läßt sie auf der Phantasie, auf dem Gefühle beruhen; die wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse sollen das Resultat einer Phantastereien Begriffsentwicklung sein. Goethe stellt sich die Sache anders vor. Für ihn ergibt sich, wenn er das Auge auf die Natur richtet, eine Summe von Ideen; aber er findet, daß in dem einzelnen Erfahrungsgegenstande der ideelle Bestandteil nicht abgeschlossen ist; die Idee weist über das einzelne hinaus auf verwandte Gegenstände, in denen sie auf ähnliche Weise zur Erscheinung kommt. Der philosophierende Beobachter hält diesen ideellen Bestandteil fest und bringt ihn in seinen Gedankenwerken unmittelbar zum Ausdrucke. Auch auf den Künstler wirkt dieses Ideelle. Aber es treibt ihn ein Werk zu gestalten, in dem die Idee nicht bloß wie in einem Naturwerke wirkt, sondern zur gegenwärtigen Erscheinung wird. Was in dem Naturwerke bloß ideell ist und sich dem geistigen Auge des Beobachters enthüllt, das wird in dem Kunstwerke real, wird wahrnehmbare Wirklichkeit. Der Künstler verwirklicht die Ideen der Natur. Er braucht sich aber diese nicht in Form der Ideen zum Bewußtsein zu bringen. Wenn er ein Ding oder ein Ereignis betrachtet, so gestaltet sich in seinem Geiste unmittelbar ein anderes, das in realer Erscheinung enthält, was jene nur als Idee. Der Künstler liefert Bilder der Naturwerke, welche deren Ideengehalt in einen Wahrnehmungsgehalt umsetzen. Der Philosoph zeigt, wie sich die Natur der denkenden Betrachtung darstellt; der Künstler zeigt, wie die Natur aussehen würde, wenn sie ihre wirkenden Kräfte nicht bloß dem Denken, sondern auch der Wahrnehmung offen entgegenbrächte. Es ist eine und dieselbe Wahrheit, die der Philosoph in Form des Gedankens, der Künstler in Form des Bildes darstellt. Beide unterscheiden sich nur durch ihre Ausdrucksmittel.
[ 5 ] Die Einsicht in das wahre Verhältnis von Idee und Erfahrung, die sich Goethe in Italien angeeignet hat, ist nur die Frucht aus dem Samen, der in seiner Naturanlage verborgen war. Die italienische Reise brachte ihm jene Sonnenwärme, die geeignet war, den Samen zur Reife zu bringen. In dem Aufsatz «Die Natur», der 1782 im Tiefurter Journal erschienen ist, und der Goethe zum Urheber hat (vgl. meinen Nachweis von Goethes Urheberschaft im VII. Bande der Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft), finden sich schon die Keime der späteren Goetheschen Weltanschauung. Was hier dunkle Empfindung ist, wird später klarer deutlicher Gedanke. «Natur! Wir sind von ihr umgeben und umschlungen - unvermögend, aus ihr herauszutreten, und unvermögend, tiefer in sie hineinzukommen. Ungebeten und ungewarnt nimmt sie uns in den Kreislauf ihres Tanzes auf und treibt sich mit uns fort, bis wir ermüdet sind und ihrem Arme entfallen... Gedacht hat sie (die Natur) und sinnt beständig; aber nicht als ein Mensch, sondern als Natur... Sie hat keine Sprache noch Rede, aber sie schafft Zungen und Herzen, durch die sie fühlt und spricht... Ich sprach nicht von ihr. Nein, was wahr ist und falsch ist, alles hat sie gesprochen. Alles ist ihre Schuld, alles ist ihr Verdienst! -» Als Goethe diese Sätze niederschrieb, war ihm noch nicht klar, wie die Natur durch den Menschen ihre ideelle Wesenheit ausspricht; daß es aber die Stimme des Geistes der Natur ist, die im Geiste des Menschen ertönt, das fühlte er.
[ 6 ] In Italien fand Goethe die geistige Atmosphäre, in der sich seine Erkenntnisorgane ausbilden konnten, wie sie es ihren Anlagen gemäß mußten, wenn er zur vollen Befriedigung kommen sollte. In Rom hat er «über Kunst und ihre theoretischen Forderungen mit Moritz viel verhandelt »; auf der Reise hat sich in ihm bei Beobachtung der Pflanzenmetamorphose eine naturgemäße Methode ausgebildet, die sich später für die Erkenntnis der ganzen organischen Natur fruchtbar erwiesen hat. «Denn als die Vegetation mir Schritt für Schritt ihr Verfahren vorbildete, konnte ich nicht irren, sondern mußte, indem ich sie gewähren ließ, die Wege und Mittel anerkennen, wie sie den eingehülltesten Zustand zur Vollendung nach und nach zu befördern weiß.» Wenige Jahre nach seiner Rückkehr aus Italien gelang es ihm, auch für die Betrachtung der unorganischen Natur ein aus seinen geistigen Bedürfnissen geborenes Verfahren zu finden. «Bei physischen Untersuchungen drängte sich mir die Überzeugung auf, daß, bei aller Betrachtung der Gegenstände, die höchste Pflicht sei, jede Bedingung, unter welcher ein Phänomen erscheint, genau aufzusuchen und nach möglichster Vollständigkeit der Phänomene zu trachten: weil sie doch zuletzt sich aneinanderzureihen, oder vielmehr übereinanderzugreifen genötigt werden, und vor dem Anschauen des Forschers auch eine Art Organisation bilden, ihr inneres Gesamtleben manifestieren müssen.»
[ 7 ] Goethe fand nirgends Aufklärung. Er mußte sich selbst aufklären. Er suchte den Grund dafür und glaubte ihn darin zu finden, daß er für Philosophie im eigentlichen Sinne kein Organ hätte. Er ist aber darin zu suchen, daß die einseitig erfaßte platonische Denkweise, die alle ihm zugänglichen Philosophien beherrschte, seiner gesunden Naturanlage widersprach. In seiner Jugend hatte er sich wiederholt an Spinoza gewandt. Er gesteht sogar, daß dieser Philosoph auf ihn immer eine «friedliche Wirkung» hervorgebracht habe. Diese beruht darauf, daß Spinoza das Weltall als eine große Einheit ansieht, und alles Einzelne mit Notwendigkeit aus dem Ganzen hervorgehend sich denkt. Wenn sich Goethe aber auf den Inhalt der Spinozistischen Philosophie einließ, so fühlte er doch, daß dieser ihm fremd blieb. «Denke man aber nicht, daß ich seine Schriften hätte unterschreiben und mich dazu buchstäblich bekennen mögen. Denn, daß niemand den andern versteht, daß keiner bei denselben Worten dasselbe, was der andere, denkt, daß ein Gespräch, eine Lektüre bei verschiedenen Personen verschiedene Gedankenfolgen aufregt, hatte ich schon allzu deutlich eingesehen, und man wird dem Verfasser von Werther und Faust wohl zutrauen, daß er, von solchen Mißverständnissen tief durchdrungen, nicht selbst den Dünkel gehegt, einen Mann vollkommen zu verstehen, der als Schüler von Descartes, durch mathematische und rabbinische Kultur sich zu dem Gipfel des Denkens hervorgehoben; der bis auf den heutigen Tag noch das Ziel aller spekulativen Bemühungen zu sein scheint.» Nicht der Umstand, daß Spinoza durch Descartes geschult worden ist, auch nicht der, daß er durch mathematische und rabbinische Kultur sich zu dem Gipfel des Denkens erhoben hat, machte ihn für Goethe zu einem Element, an das er sich doch nicht ganz hingeben konnte, sondern seine wirklichkeitsfremde, rein logische Art, die Erkenntnis zu behandeln. Goethe konnte sich dem reinen erfahrungsfreien Denken nicht hingeben, weil er es nicht zu trennen vermochte von der Gesamtheit des Wirklichen. Er wollte nicht einen Gedanken bloß logisch an den andern angliedern. Vielmehr erschien ihm eine solche Gedankentätigkeit von der wahren Wirklichkeit abzulenken. Er mußte den Geist in die Erfahrung versenken, um zu den Ideen zu kommen. Die Wechselwirkung von Idee und Wahrnehmung war ihm ein geistiges Atemholen. «Durch die Pendelschläge wird die Zeit, durch die Wechselbewegung von Idee und Erfahrung die sittliche und wissenschaftliche Welt regiert.» Im Sinne dieses Satzes die Welt und ihre Erscheinungen zu betrachten, schien Goethe naturgemäß. Denn für ihn gab es keinen Zweifel darüber, daß die Natur dasselbe Verfahren beobachtet: daß sie « eine Entwicklung aus einem lebendigen geheimnisvollen Ganzen» zu den mannigfaltigen besonderen Erscheinungen hin ist, die den Raum und die Zeit erfüllen. Das geheimnisvolle Ganze ist die Welt der Idee. «Die Idee ist ewig und einzig; daß wir auch den Plural brauchen, ist nicht wohlgetan. Alles, was wir gewahr werden und wovon wir reden können, sind nur Manifestationen der Idee; Begriffe sprechen wir aus, und insofern ist die Idee selbst ein Begriff.» Das Schaffen der Natur geht aus dem Ganzen, das ideeller Art ist, ins Einzelne, das als Reelles der Wahrnehmung gegeben ist. Deshalb soll der Beobachter: «das Ideelle im Reellen anerkennen und sein jeweiliges Mißbehagen mit dem Endlichen durch Erhebung ins Unendliche beschwichtigen». Goethe ist überzeugt davon, daß «die Natur nach Ideen verfahre, ingleichen, daß der Mensch in allem, was er beginnt, eine Idee verfolge». Wenn es dem Menschen wirklich gelingt, sich zu der Idee zu erheben, und von der Idee aus die Einzelheiten der Wahrnehmung zu begreifen, so vollbringt er dasselbe, was die Natur vollbringt, indem sie ihre Geschöpfe aus dem geheimnisvollen Ganzen hervorgehen läßt. Solange der Mensch das Wirken und Schaffen der Idee nicht fühlt, bleibt sein Denken von der lebendigen Natur abgesondert. Er muß das Denken als eine bloß subjektive Tätigkeit ansehen, die ein abstraktes Bild von der Natur entwerfen kann. Sobald er aber fühlt, wie die Idee in seinem Innern lebt und tätig ist, betrachtet er sich und die Natur als ein Ganzes, und was als Subjektives in seinem Innern erscheint, das gilt ihm zugleich als objektiv; er weiß, daß er der Natur nicht mehr als Fremder gegenübersteht, sondern er fühlt sich verwachsen mit dem Ganzen derselben. Das Subjektive ist objektiv geworden; das Objektive von dem Geiste ganz durchdrungen. Goethe ist der Meinung, der Grundirrtum Kants bestehe darin, daß dieser «das subjektive Erkenntnisvermögen nun selbst als Objekt betrachtet und den Punkt, wo subjektiv und objektiv zusammentreffen, zwar scharf aber nicht ganz richtig sondert.» (Sophien-Ausgabe, 2. Abteilung, Bd. XI, S.376.) Das Erkenntnisvermögen erscheint dem Menschen nur so lange als subjektiv, als er nicht beachtet, daß die Natur selbst es ist, die durch dasselbe spricht. Subjektiv und objektiv treffen zusammen, wenn die objektive Ideenwelt im Subjekte auflebt, und in dem Geiste des Menschen dasjenige lebt, was in der Natur selbst tätig ist. Wenn das der Fall ist, dann hört aller Gegensatz von subjektiv und objektiv auf. Dieser Gegensatz hat nur eine Bedeutung, solange der Mensch ihn künstlich aufrecht erhält, solange er die Ideen als seine Gedanken betrachtet, durch die das Wesen der Natur abgebildet wird, in denen es aber nicht selbst wirksam ist. Kant und die Kantianer hatten keine Ahnung davon, daß in den Ideen der Vernunft das Wesen, das Ansich der Dinge unmittelbar erlebt wird. Für sie ist alles Ideelle ein bloß Subjektives. Deshalb kamen sie zu der Meinung, das Ideelle könne nur dann notwendig gültig sein, wenn auch dasjenige, auf das es sich bezieht, die Erfahrungswelt, nur subjektiv ist. Mit Goethes Anschauungen steht die Kantsche Denkweise in einem scharfen Gegensatz. Es gibt zwar einzelne Äußerungen Goethes, in denen er von Kants Ansichten in einer anerkennenden Art spricht. Er erzählt, daß er manchem Gespräch über diese Ansichten beigewohnt habe. «Mit einiger Aufmerksamkeit konnte ich bemerken, daß die alte Hauptfrage sich erneuere, wieviel unser Selbst und wieviel die Außenwelt zu unserm geistigen Dasein beitrage. Ich hatte beide niemals gesondert, und wenn ich nach meiner Weise über Gegenstände philosophierte, so tat ich es mit unbewußter Naivität und glaubte wirklich, ich sähe meine Meinungen vor Augen. Sobald aber jener Streit zur Sprache kam, mochte ich mich gern auf diejenige Seite stellen, welche dem Menschen am meisten Ehre macht, und gab allen Freunden vollkommen Beifall, die mit Kant behaupteten: wenn gleich alle unsere Erkenntnis mit der Erfahrung angehe, so entspringe sie darum doch nicht eben alle aus der Erfahrung.» Die Idee stammt auch, nach Goethes Ansicht, nicht aus dem Teile der Erfahrung, welcher der bloßen Wahrnehmung durch die Sinne des Menschen sich darbietet. Die Vernunft, die Phantasie müssen sich betätigen, müssen in das Innere der Wesen dringen, um sich der ideellen Elemente des Daseins zu bemächtigen. Insofern hat der Geist des Menschen Anteil an dem Zustandekommen der Erkenntnis. Goethe meint, es mache dem Menschen Ehre, daß in seinem Geiste die höhere Wirklichkeit, die den Sinnen nicht zugänglich ist, zur Erscheinung komme; Kant dagegen spricht der Erfahrungswelt den Charakter der höheren Wirklichkeit ab, weil sie Bestandteile enthält, die aus dem Geiste stammen. Nur wenn er die Kantschen Sätze erst im Sinne seiner Weltanschauung umdeutete, konnte Goethe sich zustimmend zu ihnen verhalten. Die Grundlagen der Kantschen Denkweise widersprechen Goethes Wesen aufs schärfste. Wenn dieser den Widerspruch nicht scharf genug betonte, so liegt das wohl nur darin, daß er sich auf diese Grundlagen nicht einließ, weil sie ihm zu fremd waren. «Der Eingang (der Kritik der reinen Vernunft) war es, der mir gefiel, ins Labyrinth selbst konnte ich mich nicht wagen: bald hinderte mich die Dichtungsgabe, bald der Menschenverstand, und ich fühlte mich nirgends gebessert.» Über seine Gespräche mit den Kantianern mußte sich Goethe eingestehen: «Sie hörten mich wohl, konnten mir aber nichts erwidern, noch irgend förderlich sein. Mehr als einmal begegnete es mir, daß einer oder der andere mit lächelnder Verwunderung zugestand: es sei freilich ein Analogon Kantscher Vorstellungsart, aber ein seltsames.» Es war, wie ich gezeigt, auch kein Analogon, sondern das entschiedenste Gegenteil der Kantschen Vorstellungsart.
[ 8 ] Es ist interessant zu sehen, wie Schiller sich über den Gegensatz der Goetheschen Denkweise und seiner eigenen aufzuklären sucht. Er empfindet das Ursprüngliche und Freie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung. Aber er kann die einseitig erfaßten platonischen Gedankenelemente aus seinem eigenen Geiste nicht entfernen. Er kann sich nicht zu der Einsicht erheben, daß Idee und Wahrnehmung in der Wirklichkeit nicht getrennt vorhanden sind, sondern nur künstlich von dem durch falsch gelenkte Ideenrichtung verführten Verstand getrennt gedacht werden. Deshalb stellt er der Goetheschen Geistesart, die er als eine intuitive bezeichnet, die eigene als spekulative gegenüber und behauptet, daß beide, wenn sie nur kraftvoll genug wirken, zu einem gleichen Ziele führen müssen. Von dem intuitiven Geiste nimmt Schiller an, daß er sich an das Empirische, Individuelle halte und von da aus zu dem Gesetze, zu der Idee aufsteige. Falls ein solcher Geist genialisch ist, wird er in dem Empirischen das Notwendige, in dem Individuellen die Gattung erkennen. Der spekulative Geist dagegen soll den umgekehrten Weg machen. Ihm soll zuerst das Gesetz, die Idee gegeben sein, und von ihr soll er zum Empirischen und Individuellen herabsteigen. Ist ein solcher Geist genialisch, so wird er zwar immer nur Gattungen im Auge haben, aber mit der Möglichkeit des Lebens und mit gegründeter Beziehung auf wirkliche Objekte. Die Annahme einer besonderen Geistesart, der spekulativen gegenüber der intuitiven, beruht auf dem Glauben, daß der Ideenwelt ein abgesondertes ,von der Wahrnehmungswelt getrenntes Dasein zukomme. Wäre dies der Fall, dann könnte es einen Weg geben, auf dem der Inhalt der Ideen über die Dinge der Wahrnehmung in den Geist käme, auch wenn ihn dieser nicht in der Erfahrung aufsuchte. Ist aber die Ideenwelt mit der Erfahrungswirklichkeit untrennbar verbunden, sind beide nur als ein Ganzes vorhanden, so kann es nur eine intuitive Erkenntnis, die in der Erfahrung die Idee aufsucht und mit dem Individuellen zugleich die Gattung erfaßt, geben. In Wahrheit gibt es auch keinen rein spekulativen Geist im Sinne Schillers. Denn die Gattungen existieren nur innerhalb der Sphäre, der auch die Individuen angehören; und der Geist kann sie anderswo gar nicht finden. Hat ein sogenannter spekulativer Geist wirklich Gattungsideen, so stammen diese aus der Beobachtung der wirklichen Welt. Wenn das lebendige Gefühl für diesen Ursprung, für den notwendigen Zusammenhang des Gattungsmäßigen mit dem Individuellen verloren geht, dann entsteht die Meinung, solche Ideen können in der Vernunft auch ohne Erfahrung entstehen. Die Bekenner dieser Meinung bezeichnen eine Summe von abstrakten Gattungsideen als Inhalt der reinen Vernunft, weil sie die Fäden nicht sehen, mit denen diese Ideen an die Erfahrung gebunden sind. Eine solche Täuschung ist am leichtesten bei den allgemeinsten, umfassendsten Ideen möglich. Da solche Ideen weite Gebiete der Wirklichkeit umspannen, so ist in ihnen manches ausgetilgt oder abgeblaßt, was den zu diesem Gebiete gehörigen Individualitäten zukommt. Man kann eine Anzahl solcher allgemeiner Ideen durch Überlieferung in sich aufnehmen und dann glauben, sie seien dem Menschen angeboren, oder man habe sie aus der reinen Vernunft herausgesponnen. Ein Geist, der einem solchen Glauben verfällt, kann sich als spekulativ ansehen. Er wird aus seiner Ideenwelt aber nie mehr herausholen können, als diejenigen hineingelegt haben, von denen er sie überliefert erhalten hat. Wenn Schiller meint, daß der spekulative Geist, wenn er genialisch ist, «zwar immer nur Gattungen, aber mit der Möglichkeit des Lebens und mit gegründeter Beziehung auf wirkliche Objekte» erzeugt (vgl. Schillers Brief an Goethe vom 23. August. 1794), so ist er im Irrtum. Ein wirklich spekulativer Geist, der nur in Gattungsbegriffen lebte, könnte in seiner Ideenwelt keine andere gegründete Beziehung zur Wirklichkeit finden, als diejenige, die schon in ihr liegt. Ein Geist, der Beziehungen zur Wirklichkeit der Natur hat und sich dennoch als spekulativ bezeichnet, ist in einer Täuschung über seine eigene Wesenheit befangen. Diese Täuschung kann ihn dazu verführen, seine Beziehungen zur Wirklichkeit, zum unmittelbaren Leben zu vernachlässigen. Er wird glauben, der unmittelbaren Beobachtung entraten zu können, weil er andere Quellen der Wahrheit zu haben meint. Die Folge davon ist immer, daß die Ideenwelt eines solchen Geistes einen matten abgeblaßten Charakter trägt. Die frischen Farben des Lebens werden seinen Gedanken fehlen. Wer im Bunde mit der Wirklichkeit leben will, wird aus einer solchen Gedankenwelt nicht viel gewinnen können. Nicht als eine Geistesart, die neben der intuitiven als gleichberechtigt anzusehen ist, kann die spekulative gelten, sondern als eine verkümmerte, an Leben verarmte Denkart. Der intuitive Geist hat es nicht bloß mit Individuen zu tun, er sucht nicht in dem Empirischen den Charakter der Notwendigkeit auf. Sondern wenn er sich der Natur zuwendet, vereinigen sich bei ihm Wahrnehmung und Idee unmittelbar zu einer Einheit. Beide werden ineinander geschaut und als Ganzheit empfunden. Er kann zu den allgemeinsten Wahrheiten, zu den höchsten Abstraktionen aufsteigen: das unmittelbar wirkliche Leben wird in seiner Gedankenwelt immer zu erkennen sein. Solcher Art war Goethes Denken. Heinroth hat in seiner Anthropologie ein treffliches Wort über dieses Denken gesprochen, das Goethe im höchsten Grade gefiel, weil es ihn über seine Natur aufklärte. «Herr Dr. Heinroth ... spricht von meinem Wesen und Wirken günstig, ja er bezeichnet meine Verfahrungsart als eine eigentümliche: daß nämlich mein Denkvermögen gegenständlich tätig sei, womit er aussprechen will, daß mein Denken sich von den Gegenständen nicht sondere; daß die Elemente der Gegenstände, die Anschauungen in dasselbe eingehen und von ihm auf das innigste durchdrungen werden; daß mein Anschauen selbst ein Denken, mein Denken ein Anschauen sei.» Im Grunde schildert Heinroth nichts als die Art, wie sich jedes gesunde Denken zu den Gegenständen verhält. Jede andere Verfahrungsart ist eine Abirrung von dem naturgemäßen Wege. Wenn in einem Menschen die Anschauung überwiegt, dann bleibt er an dem Individuellen hängen; er kann nicht in die tieferen Gründe der Wirklichkeit eindringen; wenn das abstrakte Denken in ihm überwiegt, dann erscheinen seine Begriffe unzureichend, um die lebendige Fülle des Wirklichen zu verstehen. Das Extrem der ersten Abirrung stellt den rohen Empiriker dar, der mit den individuellen Tatsachen sich begnügt; das Extrem der andern Abirrung ist in dem Philosophen gegeben, der die reine Vernunft anbetet und der nur denkt, ohne ein Gefühl davon zu haben, daß Gedanken ihrem Wesen nach an Anschauung gebunden sind. In einem schönen Bilde schildert Goethe das Gefühl des Denkers, der zu den höchsten Wahrheiten aufsteigt, ohne die Empfindung für die lebendige Erfahrung zu verlieren. Er schreibt im Anfang des Jahres 1784 einen Aufsatz über den Granit. Er versetzt sich auf einen aus diesem Gestein bestehenden Gipfel, wo er sich sagen kann: «Hier ruhst du unmittelbar auf einem Grunde, der bis zu den tiefsten Orten der Erde hinreicht, keine neuere Schicht, keine aufgehäuften, zusammengeschwemmten Trümmer haben sich zwischen dich und den festen Boden der Urwelt gelegt, du gehst nicht wie in jenen fruchtbaren Tälern über ein anhaltendes Grab, diese Gipfel haben nichts Lebendiges erzeugt und nichts Lebendiges verschlungen, sie sind vor allem Leben und über alles Leben. In diesem Augenblicke, da die innern anziehenden und bewegenden Kräfte der Erde gleichsam unmittelbar auf mich wirken, da die Einflüsse des Himmels mich näher umschweben, werde ich zu höheren Betrachtungen der Natur hinaufgestimmt, und wie der Menschengeist alles belebt, so wird auch ein Gleichnis in mir rege, dessen Erhabenheit ich nicht widerstehen kann. So einsam, sage ich zu mir selber, indem ich diesen ganz nackten Gipfel hinabsehe und kaum in der Ferne am Fuße ein gering wachsendes Moos erblickte, so einsam, sage ich, wird es dem Menschen zumute, der nur den ältesten, ersten, tiefsten Gefühlen der Wahrheit seine Seele eröffnen will. Ja, er kann zu sich sagen: Hier, auf dem ältesten, ewigen Altare, der unmittelbar auf die Tiefe der Schöpfung gebaut ist, bring ich dem Wesen aller Wesen ein Opfer. Ich fühle die ersten, festesten Anfänge unsers Daseins; ich überschaue die Welt, ihre schrofferen und gelinderen Täler und ihre fernen fruchtbaren Weiden, meine Seele wird über sich selbst und über alles erhaben und sehnt sich nach dem nähern Himmel. Aber bald ruft die brennende Sonne Durst und Hunger, seine menschlichen Bedürfnisse, zurück. Er sieht sich nach jenen Tälern um, über die sich sein Geist schon hinausschwang.» Solchen Enthusiasmus der Erkenntnis, solche Empfindungen für die ältesten, festen Wahrheiten kann nur derjenige in sich entwickeln, der immer und immer wieder aus den Regionen der Ideenwelt den Weg zurückfindet zu den unmittelbaren Anschauungen.
Goethe and the Platonic world view
[ 1 ] I have described the development of thought from Plato's to Kant's time in order to be able to show what impressions Goethe must have received when he turned to the precipitation of philosophical thought to which he could adhere in order to satisfy his so strong need for knowledge. He found no answers in the philosophies to the innumerable questions to which his nature urged him. Indeed, as often as he immersed himself in a philosopher's view of the world, there was a contrast between the direction his questions took and the world of thought from which he sought advice. The reason for this was that the one-sided Platonic separation of idea and experience was contrary to his nature. When he observed nature, it presented him with ideas. He could therefore only think it filled with ideas. A world of ideas that does not permeate the things of nature, that does not bring forth their emergence and decay, their becoming and growth, is for him a powerless web of thought. The logical continuation of series of thoughts, without immersion in the real life and creation of nature, seems unfruitful to him. For he feels intimately intertwined with nature. He sees himself as a living part of nature. What arises in his spirit has, in his view, been created in him by nature. Man should not place himself in a corner and believe that he can spin a web of thought out of himself that will shed light on the nature of things. He should allow the stream of world events to flow through him constantly. Then he will feel that the world of ideas is nothing other than the creative and active power of nature. He will not want to stand above things in order to think about them, but will burrow into their depths and extract from them what lives and works in them.
[ 2 ] His artistic nature led Goethe to such a way of thinking. With the same necessity with which a flower blossoms, he felt his poetic products grow out of his personality. The way in which the spirit in him produced the work of art seemed to him to be no different from the way in which nature produces its creatures. And just as in a work of art the spiritual element cannot be separated from spiritless matter, so it was impossible for him to imagine perception without the idea in a thing of nature. He was therefore alienated by a view that saw only something unclear and confused in perception and wanted to view the world of ideas separately, purified from all experience. He felt something contrary to nature in every world view in which the elements of one-sidedly understood Platonism lived. That is why he could not find what he was looking for in the philosophers. He was looking for the ideas that live in things and that make all the details of experience appear to grow out of a living whole, and the philosophers provided him with thought shells that they had combined into systems according to logical principles. Again and again he found himself turned back on himself when he sought enlightenment from others about the riddles that nature presented him with.
[ 3 ] It was one of the things that Goethe suffered from before his Italian journey that his need for knowledge could not find satisfaction. In Italy he was able to form a view of the driving forces from which works of art emerge. He realized that perfect works of art contain what people worship as divine, as eternal. After seeing artistic creations that particularly interested him, he wrote down the words: "The high works of art are at the same time the highest works of nature produced by men according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imaginary collapses; there is necessity, there is God." The art of the Greeks elicits the following statement from him: "I have the suspicion that they (the Greeks) proceeded according to the very laws that nature itself follows and that I am on the trail of." What Plato believed to find in the world of ideas, what the philosophers were never able to bring Goethe closer to, he saw in the works of art of Italy. For Goethe, art first reveals in perfect form that which he can regard as the basis of knowledge. He sees in artistic production a kind and higher stage of the workings of nature; artistic creation is for him a heightened creation of nature. He later expressed this in his characterization of Winckelmann: "... By being placed on the summit of nature, man sees himself again as a whole nature, which in itself has to produce another summit. To this end, he increases by imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, calling upon choice, order, harmony and meaning and finally elevating himself to the production of the work of art...". Goethe arrived at his world view not by logical deduction, but by contemplating the essence of art. And what he found in art, he also sought in nature.
[ 4 ] The activity through which Goethe acquires a knowledge of nature is not essentially different from the artistic one. Both merge into one another and overlap. In Goethe's opinion, the artist must become greater and more decisive if, in addition to his "talent, he is also an instructed botanist, if he recognizes, from the root, the influence of the various parts on the flourishing and growth of the plant, their purpose and reciprocal effect, if he understands and considers the successive development of flowers, leaves, fertilization, fruit and the new germ. He will then not only show his taste by choosing from the appearances, but he will also astonish and instruct us at the same time by a correct representation of the characteristics." The work of art is therefore all the more perfect the more it expresses the same lawfulness that is contained in the work of nature to which it corresponds. There is only one unified realm of truth, and this encompasses art and nature. Therefore, the ability of artistic creation cannot be essentially different from that of recognizing nature. Goethe says of the artist's style that it "rests on the deepest foundations of knowledge, on the essence of things, insofar as we are permitted to recognize it in visible and tangible forms." The view of the world that emerged from one-sidedly grasped Platonic ideas draws a sharp line between science and art. Artistic activity is based on the imagination, on feeling; scientific results are supposed to be the outcome of an imaginative development of concepts. Goethe sees things differently. For him, when he turns his eye to nature, the result is a sum of ideas; but he finds that in the individual object of experience the ideal component is not complete; the idea points beyond the individual to related objects in which it appears in a similar way. The philosophizing observer captures this ideal component and expresses it directly in his works of thought. This ideal also has an effect on the artist. But it drives him to create a work in which the idea does not merely work as in a work of nature, but becomes a present appearance. What is merely ideal in the work of nature and reveals itself to the observer's mind's eye becomes real in the work of art, becomes perceptible reality. The artist realizes the ideas of nature. But he does not need to bring them to consciousness in the form of ideas. When he looks at a thing or an event, another one is immediately formed in his mind, which contains in real appearance what that one contains only as an idea. The artist provides images of works of nature which transform their idea content into a perceptual content. The philosopher shows how nature presents itself to thinking contemplation; the artist shows how nature would look if its active forces were open not only to thinking but also to perception. It is one and the same truth that the philosopher presents in the form of thought and the artist in the form of image. Both differ only in their means of expression.
[ 5 ] The insight into the true relationship between idea and experience that Goethe acquired in Italy is only the fruit of the seed that was hidden in his natural disposition. The Italian journey brought him the warmth of the sun that was suitable for bringing the seed to maturity. In the essay "Nature", which appeared in the Tiefurter Journal in 1782, and which has Goethe as its author (cf. my proof of Goethe's authorship in Volume VII of the Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft), the germs of Goethe's later world view can already be found. What is a dark sentiment here later becomes a clear and distinct thought. "Nature! We are surrounded and enveloped by it - unable to step out of it and unable to get deeper into it. Uninvited and unwarned, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and drives us along until we are weary and fall from her arms... She (nature) has thought and thinks constantly; but not as a human being, but as nature... She has no speech nor language, but she creates tongues and hearts through which she feels and speaks... I did not speak of her. No, what is true and what is false, all she has spoken. Everything is her fault, everything is her merit! -" When Goethe wrote these sentences, he did not yet realize how nature expresses its ideal essence through man; but that it is the voice of the spirit of nature that resounds in the spirit of man, he felt.
[ 6 ] In Italy, Goethe found the spiritual atmosphere in which his cognitive organs could develop, as they had to according to their nature if he was to achieve full satisfaction. In Rome, he "discussed art and its theoretical demands a great deal with Moritz"; during the journey, while observing plant metamorphosis, he developed a natural method that later proved fruitful for the knowledge of all organic nature. "For as vegetation demonstrated its process to me step by step, I could not err, but had to recognize, by letting it do so, the ways and means by which it knows how to gradually promote the most enveloped state to perfection." A few years after his return from Italy, he also succeeded in finding a method born of his spiritual needs for the observation of inorganic nature. "In physical investigations, the conviction forced itself upon me that, in all observation of objects, the highest duty is to seek out exactly every condition under which a phenomenon appears and to strive for the greatest possible completeness of the phenomena: because they are ultimately forced to line up, or rather to interlock, and must also form a kind of organization before the researcher's gaze, manifesting their inner overall life."
[ 7 ] Goethe found no enlightenment anywhere. He had to enlighten himself. He sought the reason for this and believed he found it in the fact that he had no organ for philosophy in the proper sense. But it was to be found in the fact that the one-sided Platonic way of thinking, which dominated all the philosophies accessible to him, contradicted his healthy natural disposition. In his youth he had repeatedly turned to Spinoza. He even confesses that this philosopher always had a "peaceful effect" on him. This was based on the fact that Spinoza regarded the universe as a great unity and that everything individual necessarily emerged from the whole. However, even when Goethe became involved in the content of Spinoza's philosophy, he felt that it remained alien to him. "But do not think that I would have subscribed to his writings and literally professed them. For I had already realized all too clearly that no one understands the other, that no one thinks the same thing with the same words that the other thinks, that a conversation, a reading, provokes different trains of thought in different people, and the author of Werther and Faust can be credited with this, that he, deeply imbued with such misunderstandings, did not himself cherish the conceit of fully understanding a man who, as a pupil of Descartes, through mathematical and rabbinical culture, elevated himself to the summit of thought; who to this day still seems to be the goal of all speculative endeavors. " It was not the fact that Spinoza had been trained by Descartes, nor that he had risen to the summit of thought through mathematical and rabbinical culture, that made him an element for Goethe to which he could not completely devote himself, but his purely logical way of treating knowledge that was alien to reality. Goethe could not devote himself to pure, experience-free thinking because he was unable to separate it from the totality of reality. He did not want to link one thought to another merely logically. Rather, such mental activity seemed to him to distract from true reality. He had to immerse his mind in experience in order to arrive at ideas. For him, the interaction between idea and perception was a spiritual breathing space. "Time is governed by the swing of the pendulum, the moral and scientific world by the alternating movement of idea and experience." Viewing the world and its phenomena in terms of this sentence seemed natural to Goethe. For for him there was no doubt that nature observes the same process: that it is "a development from a living mysterious whole" to the manifold particular phenomena that fill space and time. The mysterious whole is the world of the idea. "The idea is eternal and unique; that we also need the plural is not well done. All that we become aware of and can speak of are only manifestations of the idea; we express concepts, and in this respect the idea itself is a concept." The creation of nature proceeds from the whole, which is of an ideal nature, into the individual, which is given to perception as something real. Therefore, the observer should: "recognize the ideal in the real and appease his respective discomfort with the finite by elevating it to the infinite". Goethe is convinced that "nature proceeds according to ideas, and likewise that man pursues an idea in everything he begins". If man really succeeds in elevating himself to the idea and in grasping the details of perception from the idea, he accomplishes the same thing that nature accomplishes by allowing its creatures to emerge from the mysterious whole. As long as man does not feel the working and creation of the idea, his thinking remains separated from living nature. He must regard thinking as a merely subjective activity that can create an abstract image of nature. But as soon as he feels how the idea lives and is active within him, he regards himself and nature as one whole, and what appears as subjective within him is at the same time regarded as objective; he knows that he is no longer a stranger to nature, but feels himself to be one with the whole of it. The subjective has become objective; the objective is completely permeated by the spirit. Goethe is of the opinion that Kant's fundamental error consists in the fact that he "now regards the subjective faculty of knowledge itself as an object and distinguishes the point where subjective and objective meet, sharply but not quite correctly." (Sophien-Ausgabe, 2. Abteilung, Vol. XI, p.376.) The faculty of cognition appears to man as subjective only so long as he does not realize that it is nature itself that speaks through it. Subjective and objective meet when the objective world of ideas comes to life in the subject, and that which is active in nature itself lives in the spirit of man. When this is the case, then all opposition between subjective and objective ceases. This opposition has meaning only as long as man maintains it artificially, as long as he regards ideas as his thoughts, through which the essence of nature is represented, but in which it is not itself active. Kant and the Kantians had no idea that in the Ideas of Reason the essence, the Ansich of things is directly experienced. For them, everything ideal is merely subjective. Therefore they came to the opinion that the ideal could only be necessarily valid if that to which it refers, the world of experience, is also only subjective. Kant's way of thinking stands in sharp contrast to Goethe's views. There are indeed individual statements by Goethe in which he speaks of Kant's views in an approving manner. He tells us that he attended many a conversation about these views. "I noticed with some attention that the old main question was renewing itself, how much our self and how much the outside world contribute to our spiritual existence. I had never separated the two, and when I philosophized in my own way about objects, I did so with unconscious naivety and really believed that I saw my opinions before my eyes. But as soon as that controversy came up, I liked to take the side that did man the most honor, and gave complete approval to all friends who, with Kant, claimed that even if all our knowledge began with experience, it did not all spring from experience." Nor, in Goethe's view, does the idea originate from that part of experience which presents itself to mere perception through the human senses. Reason and imagination must become active, must penetrate into the inner being in order to take possession of the ideal elements of existence. In this respect, the spirit of man has a share in the realization of knowledge. Goethe thinks that it is a credit to man that the higher reality, which is not accessible to the senses, appears in his spirit; Kant, on the other hand, denies the world of experience the character of higher reality because it contains elements that come from the spirit. Only when he reinterpreted Kant's propositions in terms of his world view could Goethe agree with them. The foundations of Kant's way of thinking contradict Goethe's nature in the sharpest possible terms. If he did not emphasize the contradiction sharply enough, it was probably only because he did not engage with these foundations because they were too foreign to him. "It was the entrance (to the Critique of Pure Reason) that appealed to me, but I could not venture into the labyrinth itself: sometimes the gift of poetry hindered me, sometimes common sense, and nowhere did I feel better." Goethe had to admit about his conversations with the Kantians: "They heard me well, but could neither answer me nor be of any help. More than once I encountered one or the other admitting with smiling astonishment that it was, of course, an analog of Kant's way of thinking, but a strange one." It was, as I have shown, not an analogy either, but the most decided opposite of the Kantian mode of conception.
[ 8 ] It is interesting to see how Schiller seeks to clarify the contrast between Goethe's way of thinking and his own. He feels the originality and freedom of Goethe's world view. But he cannot remove the one-sidedly grasped Platonic elements of thought from his own mind. He cannot rise to the insight that idea and perception do not exist separately in reality, but are only artificially thought separately by the intellect seduced by the wrong direction of ideas. He therefore contrasts Goethe's way of thinking, which he describes as intuitive, with his own as speculative and claims that both, if they are powerful enough, must lead to the same goal. Schiller assumes of the intuitive mind that it holds to the empirical, the individual, and from there ascends to the law, to the idea. If such a mind is ingenious, it will recognize the necessary in the empirical, the genus in the individual. The speculative mind, on the other hand, should take the opposite path. It should first be given the law, the idea, and from this it should descend to the empirical and the individual. If such a spirit is ingenious, it will always have only genera in mind, but with the possibility of life and with a well-founded relationship to real objects. The assumption of a special kind of mind, the speculative as opposed to the intuitive, is based on the belief that the world of ideas has a separate existence from the world of perception. If this were the case, then there could be a way in which the content of ideas could enter the mind via the things of perception, even if the mind did not seek it out in experience. But if the world of ideas is inseparably connected with the reality of experience, if both exist only as one whole, then there can only be an intuitive cognition that seeks out the idea in experience and at the same time grasps the genus with the individual. In truth, there is also no purely speculative spirit in Schiller's sense. For the genera exist only within the sphere to which the individuals also belong; and the spirit cannot find them elsewhere. If a so-called speculative mind really has generic ideas, these originate from the observation of the real world. If the living feeling for this origin, for the necessary connection between the generic and the individual, is lost, then the opinion arises that such ideas can also arise in reason without experience. The advocates of this opinion describe a sum of abstract generic ideas as the content of pure reason, because they do not see the threads by which these ideas are bound to experience. Such a deception is most easily possible with the most general, comprehensive ideas. Since such ideas embrace wide areas of reality, much is erased or blotted out in them which belongs to the individualities belonging to this area. One can absorb a number of such general ideas through tradition and then believe that they are innate to man, or that they have been spun out of pure reason. A mind that falls prey to such a belief can regard itself as speculative. But he will never be able to get more out of his world of ideas than those from whom he has received them. If Schiller thinks that the speculative mind, when it is ingenious, "always produces only genera, but with the possibility of life and with a well-founded relation to real objects" (cf. Schiller's letter to Goethe of August 23, 1794), he is mistaken. A truly speculative mind that lived only in generic concepts could find in its world of ideas no other founded relation to reality than that which already lies in it. A mind that has relations to the reality of nature and yet calls itself speculative is caught up in a delusion about its own essence. This delusion can lead it to neglect its relationship to reality, to immediate life. He will believe that he can dispense with direct observation because he thinks he has other sources of truth. The consequence of this is always that the world of ideas of such a mind has a dull, pale character. His thoughts will lack the fresh colors of life. Whoever wants to live in union with reality will not be able to gain much from such a world of ideas. The speculative mind cannot be regarded as a way of thinking on an equal footing with the intuitive mind, but rather as a stunted way of thinking that lacks life. The intuitive mind does not merely deal with individuals, it does not seek the character of necessity in the empirical. Rather, when it turns to nature, perception and idea unite directly to form a unity. Both are seen in each other and perceived as a whole. He can ascend to the most general truths, to the highest abstractions: the directly real life will always be recognizable in his world of thought. Such was Goethe's way of thinking. In his Anthropology, Heinroth spoke an excellent word about this thinking, which Goethe liked to the highest degree because it enlightened him about his nature. "Dr. Heinroth ... speaks favorably of my nature and activity, indeed, he describes my way of proceeding as a peculiar one: namely, that my thinking faculty is objectively active, by which he means to say that my thinking does not separate itself from the objects; that the elements of the objects, the views, enter into it and are most intimately permeated by it; that my viewing itself is a thinking, my thinking a viewing." Basically, Heinroth describes nothing but the way in which every healthy thinking relates to objects. Any other way of proceeding is a deviation from the natural way. If a person is dominated by his view, then he remains attached to the individual; he cannot penetrate into the deeper reasons of reality; if abstract thinking predominates in him, then his concepts appear insufficient to understand the living fullness of reality. The extreme of the first aberration is represented by the crude empiricist who is content with individual facts; the extreme of the other aberration is given in the philosopher who worships pure reason and who only thinks without having a sense of the fact that thought is by its nature bound to perception. Goethe describes in a beautiful picture the feeling of the thinker who ascends to the highest truths without losing his feeling for living experience. At the beginning of 1784, he wrote an essay on granite. He places himself on a peak made of this rock, where he can say to himself: "Here you rest directly on a ground that reaches to the deepest places of the earth, no recent layer, no heaped up, washed together debris has come between you and the solid ground of the primeval world, you do not walk over a lingering grave as in those fertile valleys, these peaks have produced nothing living and devoured nothing living, they are before all life and above all life. At this moment, when the inner attracting and moving forces of the earth act directly on me, as it were, when the influences of heaven hover closer around me, I am attuned to higher contemplations of nature, and just as the human spirit animates everything, so too a parable is stirred in me, the sublimity of which I cannot resist. So lonely, I say to myself, as I look down at this completely naked peak and barely see a little moss growing at the foot in the distance, so lonely, I say, does it feel to the man who only wants to open his soul to the oldest, first, deepest feelings of truth. Yes, he can say to himself: Here, on the oldest, eternal altar, which is built directly on the depths of creation, I make an offering to the essence of all beings. I feel the first, most solid beginnings of our existence; I survey the world, its more rugged and gentler valleys and its distant fertile pastures, my soul is elevated above itself and above everything and longs for the nearer heaven. But soon the burning sun calls back thirst and hunger, his human needs. He looks around for those valleys beyond which his spirit has already soared." Such enthusiasm for knowledge, such feelings for the oldest, most solid truths can only be developed by those who repeatedly find their way back from the regions of the world of ideas to the immediate views.